This is a collection of news about border issues, particularly those seen from Arizona and regarding the right to keep and bear arms. Sources often include Mexican media. It's often interesting to see how different the view is from the south.
If you have comments or questions drop a line to (the name of this blog)(a)knoxcomm.com

Friday, February 8, 2013

AZMEX UPDATE 3-2-13

AZMEX UPDATE 3 FEB 2013

Note: The ordeal continues for the folks in this region. Sad
stuff. The drug routes though Chih. and into TX are successful.
Other two on locals desperate to defend themselves.
mostly computer english

(El Paso Times)
EL PASO. - Chihuahua apply this month a security plan that could
participate in the federal police and the army to patrol the Sierra
Tarahumara, where criminal organizations have taken over the main and
sometimes only roads and drug violence has exploded in the last year,
according to state officials.
The operation is part of the National Security Strategy that
President Enrique Peña Nieto announced a few weeks after he took
office in December.

The security strategy, which includes the creation of a national
gendarmerie, divided the country into five security sectors.
Chihuahua sector will head North, including the states of Durango,
Coahuila, Sonora, Sinaloa and Baja California Norte and Sur,
officials said.

Governor Cesar Duarte announced Jan. 30 start of the national
security strategy in Chihuahua during a work trip in Guachochi, one
of the municipalities located in the mountains where violence has
increased.

"Next month (February) begin the most important operation in history
to regain order and peace in the Sierra de Chihuahua" Duarte wrote on
his Facebook page that day.

Duarte did not give details of the operation or what day will begin.

Behind the increase in violence in the mountains could be the fight
between cartels for control of transport routes. A recent report by
consultancy Stratfor states that "although the Sinaloa cartel was
successful in bringing to Vicente Carrillo Fuentes organization and
its armed wing, La Linea, Ciudad Juarez, the latter kept his hope for
survival as a criminal organization focusing in the control of drug
transport routes in the Sierra Madre Occidental in Chihuahua. "

Drug production in the "golden triangle" where converge the mountains
of Durango, Sinaloa and Chihuahua, has been under the control of the
Sinaloa Cartel.

Victor Salinas, a spokesman for the state government in the city of
Chihuahua, said Duarte will announce the details of the plan in the
coming days.

Salinas mentioned that one of the objectives of the plan is to
enhance the safety of roads and mountain roads where there are no
police checkpoints and patrols as in other parts of the state. He
said state police patrol the roads, without giving further details.

But a spokesman for the Attorney General, Carlos Gonzalez, said the
plan will have the support of the Federal Police and the Army.
However, did not say how or what work will.

Mexican media reported that there is also an initiative to bring
about 450 Chihuahua federal government officials, as part of the
national gendarmerie, who will be working in the security plan in the
state.

Guachochi deputy, Samuel Diaz Palma, New Alliance Party and president
of the Commission for Assistance to special groups, said his staff is
awaiting details of the plan, which welcomes you.

"At least we are seeing state government's willingness to tackle the
problem," he said.

Officials and activists agree that the violence in the municipalities
of Guachochi, Guadalupe y Calvo, Batopilas, Morelos, and Uruachi has
gone from bad to worse. Jurisdictions touristy as Creel and Urique,
have not been as affected by the violence.

Armed criminal organizations have closed major roads and set up their
own checkpoints in the municipalities affected by the violence.

"They park two or three trucks in the middle of the highway to close.
Then, if you want to continue traveling and go through their 'point',
you have to be willing to answer your questions and be inspected.
Then they speak in codes who knows who to let you through, "said
Father Javier Avila, who chairs the Committee of Solidarity and
Defense of Human Rights in the Sierra Tarahumara.

He said residents in some way, have had to get used to "the
inconvenience caused thugs" with their highway checkpoints, using
most of the time, to give his enemies.

"The problem is the criminal activities carried out against
innocents, the impunity with which they commit their crimes and the
fear they cause to residents," said Avila.

Gonzalez was not immediately available statistics of crimes committed
in the municipalities affected by the violence.

But officials and activists agreed that the extortions, kidnappings,
robberies and homicides have increased.

For example, in Guadalupe y Calvo, located on the edge of Sinaloa and
Durango state, there have been dozens of shootings and killings,
whose victims have included women and children in the last year. In
August, the police force in one of the villages resigned after death
threats against officers by members of organized crime.

Palma Diaz said the mayors and representatives of the people can do
nothing to protect the inhabitants of criminal organizations, which
have more staff and local police weapons.

The few military units and state officials in the Sierra
destacamentadas are ineffective because most of the time, are
stationed, said.

"And, when patrolling, hiding criminals and shootings are gone," he
said.

Avila doubt that the security plan in the state to succeed in the
Sierra Tarahumara.

"To restore peace and security in the mountains, authorities must
come, sit, talk and live with the people who live here. (Authorities)
should stop issuing from an office what will work, as they have done
in the past with other government programs that have failed, "he said.

MEXICO (SINEMBARGO.mx). _ No risk have cared. Defense groups have
preferred to put their lives at risk and not to continue to accept
the ineffectiveness of the state to ensure their safety, impunity of
criminal groups, extortion and corruption of officials.

What began as isolated uprisings, has now been translated into an
option for many people in Mexico: take up arms and defend their land,
their families and guardians assumed as the law into their own hands.

'More efficient than the CIA'

The state with the highest self is Guerrero, where the inhabitants of
towns like Iguala, Ayutla or Teloloapan hooded go out with machetes
or guns, placed roadblocks and face insecurity, an act that has been
endorsed by Mayors, mayors and council of at least 15 municipalities
of Costa Chica and The Mountain, supporters and civil movements
criticize the lack of resources by the government.

Such is the public recognition that some local officials say their
fight is "more efficient than the same Central U.S.
Intelligence" (CIA, for its acronym in English).

Mayor Igualapa, Guerrero, Omar Gonzalez, who also supports self-
defense, criticized the January 22 lack of resources faced since
receiving the City: an old patrol, 22 policemen and only 14 rifles,
but only eight are in good condition.

"We have no weapons, no cartridges, in July, the last administration
received five thousand rounds, but there is nothing in existence, I
want to think there was a lot of shooting, because not once did a
cartridge, and Public Safety tells us that we put a demand and to
wash our hands and we do not get in trouble, "he said.

Juchitán also supports armed civilians, as this city has faced
Zapotec crime with minimal resources.

In 2007 it was reported that in this county the police was known as
the "FBI", the "brute force Isthmus" or "poly Baata" (Bare Feet), who
had no weapons, bullets, body armor, and nothing because of this
crime were increasing.

The Mayor of John R. Escudero, Elizabeth Gutierrez, also joined the
support for the armed civilian groups and asked the Union of Peoples
and Organizations of the State of Guerrero (UPOEG) take the actions
of self-defense to the municipality, it suffers "cockroach effect"
and criminals are slowed elsewhere are to the community. He also
accused has requested assistance from the State Government to acquire
weapons, but still did not respond.

Seek to regulate

Self Defense

Meanwhile, the Governor of Guerrero, Angel Aguirre Rivero, admitted
Jan. 23 that given the lack of confidence in the Municipal Police
villagers organized self-defense movements, which may well have a
basis in law and uses 701 customs, "is necessary to update the legal
framework, so we are proposing a decree to define what are the
security attributes of community policing."

Even these groups could be settled, after the Secretary General of
Government, Humberto Salgado Gómez, announced it will soon be sent to
the local Congress an initiative on the functioning of community
policing in the municipalities of the Costa Chica and The Mountain,
arising ago 15.

What about

detainees?

But this act of justice could create new problems, "because nobody
knows what will happen to the lives of detainees, mostly suspected of
robbery, extortion and kidnapping," recently raised a report
published by The New York Times.

Guerrero is not the only state where the people have taken up arms to
fight crime, and Cheran Michoacan Urapicho did the same last year, as
the Mezquital Valley in Hidalgo and Huasteca area.

While these groups proliferate, existing uns have same slogan that
keeps standing guarding the entrance and exit of their locations and
employ as a threat to gangs and drug traffickers, "The people will
clean up the town."

The popular view of the alleged hijackers in Ayutla, Guerrero.
Photo: Xinhua / Camilo Monaco
MEXICO, DF (Proceso.com.mx.) - The National Commission on Human
Rights (CNDH) said that the people's courts installed by citizens in
the state of Guerrero, which seek to prosecute crimes and threaten to
execute sanctions violate Article 17 of the Constitution.

Therefore, the agency asked the Guerrero state government
implementing measures, indefinitely, in order to safeguard the human
rights of life, physical integrity, legal certainty and legality of
those held by the group called self-defense.

On 31 January, EU authorities four municipalities of the Costa Chica
region, which for more than three weeks decided to take up arms to
directly confront crime, stood as "people's court" and initiated a
trial of 54 people, including four women and three children, accused
of organized crime.

The unprecedented meeting lasted over three hours and involved at
least 500 people, half of them armed-, the meeting was held under
tight security in this small community of indigenous nuu'savi
(Mixtec), located in the mountainous municipality of Ayutla de los
Libres.

The members of the self-defense movement merely submitted publicly
accused and it was agreed that for the February 22 meeting will be a
second, now in the town of Tecoanapa, to develop the stage production
of evidence and arguments, and then the members of the court issued
its verdict.

In a statement, the NHRC added that as part of the investigation of
the case related to this movement, made up of different civic
organizations from various municipalities of the state, it is a
notorious fact installing a people's court in the community of El
Meson, municipality of Ayutla de los Libres, which aims to judge
people who have been arrested in raids carried out by members of the
community police called in the municipalities of Ayutla and Tecoanapa.

"In these conditions, so as to ensure respect for the human rights of
the people living in that State, without prejudice to the
responsibility of the authorities to act or omission may be involved,
the agency requested the adoption autonomous national of the
following precautionary measures ":

1. - To implement the necessary legal mechanisms to protect human
rights to life, physical integrity, legal certainty and legality of
those held by self-defense groups.

2. - The necessary actions are taken to restore public safety and
safeguard the human rights of those who live in the municipalities in
which they present the phenomenon.

The commission notes that the customs of indigenous peoples, for any
reason may not contravene the Constitution of the United Mexican
States, the Free and Sovereign State of Guerrero and existing laws.